All posts tagged Stephen Sprouse

Paige Powell remembers the first time she met the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who would later become her boyfriend. Although “The Andy Warhol Diaries” cites Aug. 9, 1983 as the couple’s first date, for Powell, the enduring impression came earlier.

It was 1981, around the time she saw a show of graffiti artist A-One over at Fashion Moda in the South Bronx. Her boyfriend at the time, Jay Shriver, Warhol’s technical assistant, took her to Basquiat’s loft on Crosby Street.

“We really got on together, so he was always trying to go out with me, and trying to take me to Jamaica and different places,” said Powell, who spoke with Speakeasy by phone from Portland, Ore. “So we would do stuff, but I wasn’t romantically involved with him then because I had a boyfriend, and also he was doing drugs. But then he got himself cleaned up.”

Over the years at Interview magazine and inside Warhol’s Factory, Powell—armed with a camera—amassed an archive of that inner circle of artists. Read More »

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